future

Throw a few things into the duffel, packing lenses and assorted field study gear. Tomorrow Shanghai to Addis Ababa for a week on the ground with the frog+ crew in, the beginning of a month and a half on the road/skies/mountain trails that will take in Ethiopia, the Oahu’s North Shore, the TED conference in Long Beach, Old Delhi and surrounds, plus no-doubt one or two more journeys and destinations.

See you on the other side.

Photo: Salloum on the Egyptian-Libyan border.

Institute for the Future and Sharable.org will be hosting Camilo Ramada for an event at the IFTF office in Palo Alto on Monday, January 30th from 6-9pm. Camilo implemented the most successful complementary currency system in South America, the C3, which is now accepted by the Uruguay government for the payment of taxes. 

About our Speaker:

Camilo Ramada was born in 1971 in Montevideo (Uruguay) and studied International Economic Relations at the University of Amsterdam.

Working since 1997 for the Social Trade Organisation – STRO (www.socialtrade.org), he participated in the research and development that led to the creation of the C3 methodology. This methodology aims to provide a competitive complementary currency tool, that is able to provide liquidity on a large scale and at different levels. The C3 method works both on micro-economic level (micro, medium and large enterprises), as well as on macro-economic level (governments and markets).

Ramada is part of the board of directors of STRO Uruguay (www.stro.org.uy), where his main focus is on the methodological aspects of the implementation of a nationwide C3, the C3 Uruguay (www.c3uruguay.com.uy) and, related to this, a C3 specifically for cooperative banks. Ramada is also responsible for other methodological developments in Latin America, with special attention to Brazil, where he implemented C3 in different segments of the local market, mainly in the C3 CompRaS, in the South of Brazil (www.circuitocompras.com.br).Presently he is developing C3 for industrial production-chains sponsored by the State of Rio Grande do Sul (www.capgiroweb.com.br).

Apart from the C3 projects, Ramada has experience in implementing and monitoring various local or complementary currency projects, such as Noppes (The Netherlands), Club del Trueque (Argentina), Banco Palmas (Brazil) and Bancos del Tiempo (Spain). 

Ramada is co-author of “Poor because of Money” (Arm door Geld, the Netherlands, 2000) and coordinator and co-author of “Onde esta o Dinheiro?” (Where is the Money?) (Brazil, 2001).

Location:

Institute for the Future

124 University Avenue

Palo Alto, CA 94301

Please RSVP here

One of those short stopovers in San Francisco – three hours on the ground.

Over the past few years IFTF’s Global Food Outlook Program research has focused on food choices and how the values people hold, the contexts that surround them, and people’s behaviors themselves, will change in the coming decade.

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This year Global Food Outlook will continue exploring how the complex global food web impacts everyday peoples’ experience of eating, and how everyday peoples' food choices, collectively, impact the global food web and the larger environment. In June, we will release our food futures research agenda for 2012 and 2013, this time focusing on the intersections of food and emerging technologies.

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Ten years ago, educator Sugata Mitra and his colleagues cracked open a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed a networked PC, and left it there for the local children to freely explore. What they quickly saw in their ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiment was that kids from one of the most desperately poor areas of the world could, without instruction, quickly learn how the PC operated. The children also freely collaborated, exploring the world of high-tech online connectivity with ease. The experiment (which provided the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire) was the dawning of Mitra’s introduction to self-organized learning, and it would shape the next decade of his research. Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning is an important update to Mitra’s groundbreaking work, and offers new research and ideas that show how self-directed learning can make kids smarter and more creative. Mitra provides step-by-step instruction on how to integrate it into any classroom. and the book includes a foreword by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of both MIT’s Media Lab and the One Laptop per Child Association.. Beyond The Hole in the Wall offers important lessons that could reshape our schools and reinvigorate our educational system. We recently spoke with Mitra about his ideas.

What is self-organized learning?

In most schools, we measure children on what they know. By and large, they have to memorize the content of whatever test is coming up. Because measuring the results of rote learning is easy, rote prevails. What kids know is just not important in comparison with whether they can think.

Self-organized learning is a process where children in groups take on a topic or question which they then research using the Internet. While doing it, they have myriad discussions with each other that deepen their understanding of the answer. Along the way, there is no adult supervision or guidance of any sort.

How is this form of learning better? Experiments show that children in unsupervised groups are capable of answering questions many years ahead of the material they’re learning in school. In fact, they seem to enjoy the absence of adult supervision, and they are very confident of finding the right answer. Ultimately, they retain the learning effortlessly and for years, much longer than what we see with rote memorization of facts and figures.

What are the barriers that stand in the way of its widespread adoption? The existing Victorian system of education was created to mass-produce identical human beings, mainly to serve an aristocracy, and, in modern times, an industrial elite. Governments find it difficult to move away from this model, because it has worked. But in a tech-driven knowledge economy this method is not needed anymore, and it will not serve us. But too often we see that teachers and educational administrators feel threatened by self-organized learning. They, therefore, think it is not learning at all.

Does the idea of self-organized learning work better with today’s child, who is often highly wired and making a wide range of online choices each day? Yes, it does. Right now, we have a generation of children 16 years old or younger who have never known a world without many of the connecting technologies that we take for granted and rely on heavily. How do these devices affect, and even improve, how we absorb information? Self-organized learning would not work at all without the Internet. Educationists have suggested this type of instruction as a method for years, but the resources were not there until recently. Now, with the Internet, we have the means and the capabilities to watch self-organized learning flourish. It’s a very exciting time.

Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning is part of the TED Books series, which is available for the Kindle and Nook as well as on Apple’s iBookstore.

In the 1970s, Diana Nyad set long-distance swim records that are still unbroken. Thirty years later, at 60, she attempted her longest swim yet, from Cuba to Florida. In this funny, powerful talk at TEDMED, she talks about how to prepare mentally to achieve an extreme dream, and asks: What will YOU do with your wild, precious life? (Recorded at TEDMED 2011, October 2011, in San Diego, California. Duration: 16:58)

Watch Diana Nyad’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

Learn more about our content partner TEDMED >>

Watch more talks from our friends at TEDMED on TED.com >>

Been tracking the contents of people’s bags, pockets and car boots for a while now, to understand how people equip themselves for what lies out there.

A useful method to get a sense of activities and priorities when people transition between their home space and what lies outside – the participant is asked to bring their ‘most often carried bag’ and lay the objects they carry on a flat surface, talking through the purpose and last-use of each item. Things to look out for – where the bag is kept in the home and what is clustered around it, what is packed/repacked on arrival/departure, and the use of different bags for different activities.

Women tend to be far more sophisticated bag carriers than men, in part because they utilise pockets less and because the social pressures to carry more appearance related objects (make-up, mirror, tissues) plus other items such as sanitary products is usually greater. But this sophistication sometimes comes at a cost – handbags carriers (and to a lesser extent other carriers of daily-use bags) are confronted with the handbag paradox that states: it is nearly always easier to add additional items to the bag than to sort through items to be removed, with the net result being that people walk around with significantly more stuff than they need. The moment when the bag carrier appreciates that the bag is over packed is often when they are in a hurry to step out the door (with no time to unpack) or when they are out and about (with nowhere to place and retrieve) what is taken out. It is common for the carrier of an over-filled bag to switch priorities on returning home – deprioritizing the ‘empty bag’ task with something else – such as the ‘empty bladder’ or ‘make tea’ task, until again they are confronted with an overfilled bag. The handbag paradox also applies to other everyday bags, hard drives and car boots (trunks). In private-car ownership cultures e.g. the United States, the car (not just the car boot) becomes the overfilled container.

Bag mapping is a useful exercise to become acquainted with the norms of a society – what we do or don’t decide to carry being a reflection of our selves and the environment in which we live and work.

See also: Scott Mainwaring’s paper on Living for the Global City – Mobile Kits, Urban Interface and Ubicomp and Mobile Essentials: Field Study and Concepting by myself and a number of ex-colleagues at Nokia.

One of the benchmarks of a nation’s development is its perceived ability to explore unchartered territories – whether heading to the moon, or sending scientific expeditions to the more far flung corners of the globe – this advertisement for the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Adminstration sponsored by Chinese outdoor equipment/clothing brand Toread. As Chinese soft-power grows, so will Chinese brand’s ability to leverage events beyond its borders as proof of (at least) being able to hold its cultural own and (at most) its cultural superiority.

Thought for today: How a growth in soft-power impacts a nation’s ability to reflect on, and publicly acknowledge both the positive and negative of its culture, and beyond that – its ability to take on (constructive) criticism from abroad, and acknowledge the positive in other cultures. And the role of brands such as Toread in writing that narrative.

TEDx events — powered by passionate volunteer hosts and committed audience members — are hotbeds of innovation, and we’re constantly looking to them for what’s next in event planning, audience participation and outreach. Each month, the TEDx team picks 10 great event ideas bubbling up from the TEDx community, highlighting them in a newsletter and on the TEDx Innovations page on the TEDx site.

We’ve picked five of our January favorites below — see all 10 on the TEDx Innovations page, where you can also sign up for February’s newsletter.

(And if you have a TEDx innovation to share, email tedxstories@ted.com.)

During TEDxValencia, attendees wrote out ideas and thoughts on Post-it notes, which were displayed on a wall during the event. Afterward, the notes were scanned and compiled on an interactive microsite. Learn more from TEDxValencia >

Dez Propaganda commissioned an 18-minute composition for TEDxValedosVinhedos, written by Valmor Pedretti Jr., with vocal contribution from Luiza Caspary. Attendees got a copy of the song on a CD in their gift bags, and you can hear it here >>><

At TEDxDelft, sponsor Senz let attendees test their storm umbrellas — designed with one side longer than the other — against a giant wind machine just outside the venue. Result? Hilarious pics >>

The TEDxAmericanRiviera stage was covered with rectangles of Mylar stretched across iron tubing. During rehearsal, speakers were given white pens and asked to write their “idea worth spreading” on the mylar. The makeshift boards were covered by the end of the day, and gave an amazing close-up when captured on video >>

On TEDxYouthDay, TEDxYouth@Chisinau held a viewing party for 47 young people at the juvenile prison in Lipcani, Moldova. At the end, the group was asked to write what “youth” means to them on a piece of paper, and then to fold a paper plane and fly it through the air. As youth reporter Alexandru Lebedev writes: “Some of them drew prison symbols, others wrote the names of social networks that they have heard about, and some wrote that they want to fall in love, or to love, or to have a family, or to have a house and a place that could give them warmth.” Read the full story on the TEDx blog >>>

See all 10 innovations on the TEDx Innovations page, where you can also sign up for February’s newsletter.

2012 may be the year of 3D printing, when this three-decade-old technology finally becomes accessible and even commonplace. Lisa Harouni gives a useful introduction to this fascinating way of making things — including intricate objects once impossible to create. (Recorded at TEDSalon London, November 2011, in London, UK. Duration: 14:50)

Watch Lisa Harouni’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

What makes you, you? Is it how you think of yourself, how others think of you, or something else entirely? At TEDxYouth@Manchester, Julian Baggini draws from philosophy and neuroscience to give a surprising answer. (Recorded at TEDxYouth@Manchester, August 2011, in Miami Beach, Florida. Duration: 12:14)

Watch Julian Baggini’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

In China a fapioa – the official receipt used for expense claims has a resale face value of 2 – 10% of face value – leaving one behind in a restaurant or taxi is the equivalent of giving a tip (in a culture where tipping is uncommon) and not requesting one allows the person or establishment to avoid ringing the exchange through a cash register. There are two primary practices around handing out fapioa: the first is that they are printed to the exact value; the second is that the seller takes an equivalent sum from book of fapioa.

In many smaller establishments the seller is reluctant to hand over fapioa since in essence it becomes declared income and it is common to have to ask twice. But in larger service industry chains where (some) tax is a given and employees feel less loyalty to the bottom line over-paying on fapioa (handing back receipts way in excess of the actual sums purchased) is like handing money back to the customer. The social norm dictates that the seller should round up.

Thoughts for today: the situations where the buyer or seller will shift a measurable value (cash, money) into other less comparable forms (fapioa, …) to disguise the real value of the exchange. Who they are disguising it from. The legal and social rules surrounding the exchange. Aftermarkets for the receipts.

Photo: overpaid fapioa in a Beijing Starbucks, meeting with Jeremy Goldkorn.

Algae plus salt water equals … fuel? At TEDxNASA@SiliconValley, Bilal Bomani reveals a self-sustaining ecosystem that produces biofuels — without wasting arable land or fresh water. (Recorded at TEDxNASA@SiliconValley, August 2011, in Miami Beach, Florida. Duration: 14:27)

Watch Bilal Bomani’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

Yesterday, TED Fellow William Kamkwamba debuted an illustrated children’s version of his memoir The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, co-written with Bryan Mealer and illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon. Since its publication in 2009, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind has been printed in 17 editions internationally. For this Young Readers edition, for ages 6 and up, Kamkwamba’s story is accompanied by Zunon’s uniquely subtle mix of oil and collage.

In conjunction with the launch of the book’s children’s edition, Kamkwamba’s NGO, Moving Windmills Project, is collaborating with the Pearson Foundation on an initiative to send up to 10,000 children’s books to Wimbe lending library, near Kamkwamba’s village in Malawi — the place where his story began. Each time the book is read online, the library receives one new book. So far there have been over 7,000 readings completed online. Learn more. Kamkwamba is now a sophomore at Dartmouth majoring in Environmental Sciences.

We caught up with illustrator and former Côte d’Ivoire denizen Elizabeth Zunon to ask her about this beautiful new edition.

What about this story touched you?

I was touched by William’s problem-solving mentality during a crisis. He endured the drought and had to drop out of school, but still figured out a way to piece together a solution with determination and only the materials that he had.

How did you decide the style of the illustrations?

I love combining oil painted portraits and collage elements, so I thought that exploring this style would fit perfectly for this book. I am always collecting pieces of colored and textured paper and fabric, and taking photographs. I thought that literally “building” the illustrations with my own found items would reflect Williams searching and building process as well.

How do you think your style and William’s story work together to create a new narrative?

I think that they both demonstrate the process of collecting, altering and piecing together disparate parts. Trusting in oneself and in one’s idea, even before it has been completed or is actually successful, is the key to satisfaction. Having the artwork demonstrate the same notions that the story does only enforces the narrative.

What do you hope young readers will learn from this story?

I hope that they’ll learn that you can build your dreams with the pieces that are already around you — that every positive and negative experience you live through is a puzzle piece for the legacy you will leave to others. Hope, courage and endless possibilities live everywhere!

I enjoyed, but was also a bit disappointed by, a recent Health Affairs article by David Erickson and Nancy Andrews looking at the role that community development could play in contributing to community-wide health and well-being. Their point, which is an important one, is that as research continues to establish clear links between community factors and health, community level initiatives will offer one of the most critical avenues for addressing the social determinants of health--and essentially, improving the health and well-being of large numbers of people for a pretty low price. I was disappointed, however, because they kept their focus on formal community development organizations--but it seems likely to me that many of the most significant community health initiatives will emerge not from traditional development, but in tandem with more emergent, bottom-up community experiments. A great article in Miller-McCune highlights some recent, particularly interesting examples, of cheap but effective citizen-led efforts to improve local communities as examples of what the article calls pop-up urbanism.

Those who undertake such up-from-the-sidewalks initiatives call them by various names: tactical urbanism, pop-up urbanism, urban acupuncture — or in one blogger’s ornate locution, “Provisional, Opportunistic, Ubiquitous, and Odd Tactics in Guerrilla and DIY Practice and Urbanism.” The events can be as short-lived and mobile as the organizing of local food trucks to meet at a certain spot where lunch options are scarce, or the annual Parking Day, when activists in scores of cities, armed with as little as AstroTurf, lawn chairs, and quarters for feeding the meter, turn an on-street parking space into a park for a few hours. Other projects, like placing low-tech swimming pools in areas where recreation options are lacking, may last for a season. The New York-based design firm Macro Sea has done this with Dumpsters that were custom-ordered and modified by their manufacturer for this very use. “The experimental approach is local and low risk, with low expectations,” says Mike Lydon, a planner and principal of the urban-design firm Street Plans Collaborative. “You can try things out at a small scale and see what works.” Lydon wrote a downloadable catalog-cum-manual called “Tactical Urbanism: Short Term Action/Long Term Change” with other activists including Aurash Khawarzad, a planner who founded a group called DoTank:Brooklyn. DoTank events have ranged from holding a potluck community party under an elevated expressway to “chair bombing” — crafting Adirondack-style chairs from shipping pallets and depositing them unbidden outside laundromats and other places where people have to spend stretches of time. People like Lydon and Khawarzad, trained in architecture and planning, would argue that some examples of pop-up urban reinvention are more effective than others. The point of the potluck was to demonstrate that the space under the highway could be put to uses more valuable than parking. Chair bombing highlights the absence of amenities in spots where people are obliged to spend time; in some cases, property owners have since added seats of their own.

I think this last point is key--what some of these bottom-up efforts can offer are examples of better ways of organizing communities so that they are designed more effectively for more people. And as research about the health effects of community become clearer, and more publicly known, many of these experiments will likely involve creative efforts to enhance community health. There's a second, more subtle point here. I've previously noted research linking strong social connections--and communities where there are high levels of social cohesion and trust--to improved community health and well-being. And these sorts of bottom-up initiatives seem like a particularly simple, but potentially transformative route for communities to feel more connected, engaged with and ultimately more trusting in their community.

Scott Rickard set out to engineer the ugliest possible piece of music, devoid of any pattern, using a mathematical concept known as the Golomb ruler. At TEDxMIA, he shares the math behind musical beauty (and its opposite). (Recorded at TEDxMIA, September 2011, in Miami Beach, Florida. Duration: 9:46)

Watch Scott Rickard’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

What does iCow do? The iCow application essentially reminds small-scale dairy farmers in Kenya of important periods in gestation. This was information farmers previously had to acquire by contacting veterinary offices or artificial insemination providers. Now, via SMS, farmers register, inputting information about their livestock, and iCow pushes information and instructions to them, prompting them on what to do during vital gestation days. It also offers tips and information on feeding practices, disease control, and so on. Much of this information is delivered over SMS, but farmers may also speak to a live person in our customer care centre. Our farmers will never trust something that is absolutely virtual — they like to know there’s a voice at the other end of the phone if they need it!

But iCow has already grown from when we launched it in June 2011 with two features — the gestation calendar and a search directory to help farmers find nearby vets and artificial inseminators. Literally — within two days — farmers started asking for more features. So we started building them, such as the iCow marketplace.

How does the marketplace work? Many farmers in the dairy sector often upgrade or sell their animals. There’s as much interest in selling your in-calf heifers as there is in selling milk to processors. But while the processors have done a fairly good job of networking on developing milk-aggregating posts, not as much has been done where farmers can actually find other farmers who are selling animals. iCow allows farmers to post notices of animals for sale on the platform, and then farmers across the country can find them. If you’re looking for a specific breed within a particular distance, you can find out easily whether there’s one for sale.

Also, some products don’t have a very well-developed value chain — say, goat’s milk. iCow enables farmers who have only have few goats and therefore small amounts of milk to find each other and aggregate their product so that it can be taken to market. Farmers can post produce for direct sale on the platform as well, of course.

But the platform goes beyond serving farmers’ needs. iCow is the last mile to the farmer. And that is very, very powerful. For many organizations, government ministries, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector, the only way to get out to the farm is either by vehicle or working in small projects with us around the country. iCow essentially networks farmers that would otherwise be very difficult to access. Right now, iCow has 80 percent geographical penetration across the country. This enables all of the other stakeholders access to those farmers. iCow is already becoming a tool that’s not only used by farmers, but also by government and other agricultural industry stakeholders.

For example, the platform allows farmers to alert the system immediately when there are disease outbreaks, allowing everyone react to it very quickly. The local authorities can then broadcast this news to all farmers on the platform in the affected region, telling them where and when to find vaccination services. Other stakeholders are using it to advertise agricultural field days or exhibitions in certain locations, or to offer financial services, for example.

You’ve said that one of the reasons you came up with the idea for iCow was to engage youth in agriculture. Why is this so important?iCow is actually a small part of a much larger original idea that’s still in development — mKulima, a voice-based agricultural encyclopedia accessible via mobile phone.

I originally got the idea because I realized it’s crucial to involve young people in farming. The average age of farmers all over the world is high — in Kenya, it’s 48; in the United States, it’s upwards of about 55 — and as farmers retire, there aren’t enough people interested in the industry to replace them. This is one of the reasons why food production is decreasing.

In Kenya, some of the younger farmers coming in don’t have the required knowledge, as they didn’t grow up in a farming environment. The original idea was to be able to disseminate information to young farmers to support their work. I figured that mobile phones were the most direct way of engaging youth, as it’s a technology they’re all familiar with.

We’re also developing agricultural education products in video, which you can see on the website. The general idea is to develop content using media formats that would engage any interested youth, taking the opportunity to deepen interest or educate. In the future, we may develop materials in print media. Comic strips could be used as well.

What’s the status of iCow now, and of mKulima? We’re about to enroll Africans in a very big way. So far, we’ve done lots of work on the ground with farmer groups, and internet networking. We hold events and hand out information — word of mouth is important. The farmers are very responsive, they’re very interested.

We have about 5,000 users across 34 counties, but we’re planning a mass rollout across mobile networks soon, and are raising funds for that. We plan to have more than 1 million farmers on the platform within two years. That may seem a lot, but Kenya is a nation of 14 million people, of which 70 percent of the country are involved in agriculture. The mKulima concept is still being developed — and will of course include information on vegetable crops as well as livestock — but it will all be rolled out under the iCow brand.

We’re thrilled with what we have now, but in terms of product development and features, there’s much, much more I want to add. It will take about five years to create a superb package of new features and expand the functionality of the ones already available.

Part of this is a usability issue. If a feature comes onto the market 70 features, there would have been information overload and nobody would have taken up the product. You have start simply and work your way up — especially as our initial target group was older. Youth pick things up much faster, but the older people on the farms at the moment need these services the most. We need to work at their pace.

What’s been your biggest challenge? It’s the pace of technology. I’m a very impatient person — so when I come up with an idea, I want it done tomorrow. With the pace of innovation and technology, it just doesn’t happen, especially where you’re blazing new frontiers. It just doesn’t happen. And that, for me, has got to be the most frustrating thing.

How has being a TED Fellow changed the way you work? Being a TED Fellow opened a lot of doors for me. If you’re a professional entrepreneur who’s very heavily involved in your work, there’s often not a lot of media focus on what you’re doing. And most entrepreneurs don’t make a lot of money — impact is what satisfies them, as well as results and scalability. Being a TED Fellow has generated a lot of media interest and general awareness, and boosted my confidence. It’s driven great partners in my direction, funding from people who just love the idea and want to support it.

The mentorship TED offers is really incredible, as well. They not only help us fine-tune our projects, but ourselves. They’ve helped me discover very clearly my weaknesses and strengths, and how to harness them to better support my vision. My coach spends a lot of time telling me to let go of some things, that I’m an obsessive person. She says, “You know what, if you’d let go of stuff, you can be more.” Half the time she’s just trying to ground me in a good way so that I can focus better on the big picture.

Then there are the other Fellows. I think there’s a competitive streak in all of us, and we are all just in awe of each other. That helps inspire and push us.

There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level; what’s one piece of advice you would give them based on your own experience and successes?

If you’re developing a product, focus on getting a working prototype done. Getting people to believe in or even understand iCow was very difficult in the idea stage. The IT people didn’t understand agriculture, and the agriculture people didn’t understand IT. People in finance didn’t understand either! Sometimes you have to connect the dots just to explain what it is you’re doing. And the best way is to get a prototype out there and show people. And they’ll get it.

Authored by: Tyler G Harding

It causes me to reflect nostalgically when I say that we are nearing our third Unreasonable Institute, or as some would say, entering our "junior" year. 

When American high school students enter their junior year (their third of four years of high school) they face tests that will determine which colleges they may (or may not) attend. Those in sports are expected to compete and perform at the varsity level. They move from underclassmen to upperclassmen. In short, the stakes are upped.

For the Unreasonable Institute the stakes are upped as well. This could, and by all means should, be an inflection year. 

We can already see that inflection point happening when we look at the Finalists on the Unreasonable Marketplace, which is where the Finalist's venture profiles are posted and where the world decides which 25 ultimately become Fellows in a race to raise the cost to attend the Institute. 

Each year the finalists on the Marketplace are more and more advanced in terms of milestones to date, revenue generated, customers and beneficiaries served, and capital raised. For example, one entrepreneur on the Marketplace is already reaching 2 million customers per month with a product that fights malnutrition.

Additionally, thanks to the help of our Pipeline Partners we have reached entrepreneurs in countries where we have never before seen applicantions from including for the first time ventures from Palestine and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  We continue to push hard to meet more "varsity level" mentors and engage new forms of Capital Partners who can bring invaluable insight and resources as these ventures try to scale to create Unreasonable impact.

On the other end, we now have 50 Fellows that have gone through our program, our Unreasonable Tribe.  Some have succeeded wildly. Others have struggled.  We are committed to bringing value to all of them.

(Left: Unreasonable Fellow Cynthia Koenig in discussion after an event. Image credit: Unreasonable Institute). 

Amongst all this, as we grow as an organization - at times up to 15 people working on Institute-related things, nearing 150 partners around the world, 100 mentors, and soon to be 75 entrepreneurs/teams/ventures that we are committed to supporting -  we work hard to keep the fast moving, agile,  entrepreneur focused, relationships-oriented organization that we started as.

When I think back to my junior year I remember one other great aspect.  That was the year I realized that if I set my mind to it I could bring more value to the world than I ever before imagined.   We enter our junior year at Unreasonable with that same outlook.  

Here's to an Unreasonable junior year for everyone.

Editor's Note: Check out the full press release on how to influence this year's Unreasonable Insitute after the jump. 

46 ENTREPRENEURS OVERCOMING GLOBAL CHALLENGES PROVE THEIR METTLE THROUGH CROWDSOURCING

Boulder, Colorado - January 10, 2012 - Forty-six entrepreneurs hailing from 25 countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Netherlands, Chile, Palestine, India, and the United States, vie for twenty-five spots in the Unreasonable Institute, a six-week, high-intensity accelerator for companies using business as a means to tackle the world's greatest social and environmental challenges. These forty-six finalists have already gotten through two rounds of vetting, outlasting over 300 applicants from 60 countries. And they face one final test: raising the $10,000 it costs to attend the Unreasonable Institute in 50 days in successively increasing small increments. The first 25 to succeed gain admission to the most Unreasonable program of their lives.

Getting into the Unreasonable Institute means living under one roof with two dozen entrepreneurs from around the world for six weeks, while learning from 50 mentors ranging from Tony Prophet, SVP of the Worldwide Supply Chain for HP, to Paul Polak, an entrepreneurs who's enabled over 19 million farmers to move out of poverty. It means being able to form relationships with 20 major impact investment funds like Acumen Fund, Calvert, and Good Capital and dozens of angel investors. The six-week program culminates with a massive pitch event in front of hundreds of potential funders and supporters, after which entrepreneurs join a network of nearly 200 partner organizations. Nathaniel Koloc, one of last year's "Unreasonable Fellows" said of his experience: "we got more done in 6 weeks than we would have in a year." His venture, ReWork, quadrupled its monthly revenue, scaled to a second city, and secured two mentors for its board.

But why ask entrepreneurs to crowdfund $10,000 to get in? "If you're going to hire someone for a sales position at your company, you ought to look at their sales record or ask them to sell you something," explains Unreasonable Institute Program Director Megha Agrawal. "So we're asking our entrepreneurs to show us that they can make the ask, that they can mobilize hundreds of supporters, that they can raise capital, and ultimately, that they will do whatever it takes to make it to the Unreasonable Institute."

And it works. The 50 entrepreneurs that have gone through the Unreasonable Institute in the past 2 years so far have raised $375,000 total on the Marketplace thanks to the grassroots campaigns built by the entrepreneurs themselves, the marketing by hundreds of Unreasonable partner organizations, and the support of HP, which has again teamed up with the Institute.  Aside from helping to raise awareness of the Unreasonable Marketplace with its global network, HP is contributing a scholarship fund for the entrepreneurs and providing technology for the 25 Fellows.  "From these combined efforts we've had former child soldiers from Liberia, Nigerian farmers, Pakistani villagers, Congolese refugees, McKinsey consultants, and MIT grads raise the money successfully," says Agrawal.

To make sure to the challenge doesn't fall prey to the "Rich Uncle Problem" - where a wealthy benefactor dumps all the money on an entrepreneur at once - there are weekly contribution caps. "In the first week, the entrepreneurs cannot receive contributions larger than $10," says Agrawal. That limit goes to $50 in the second week, $100 in the third week, and so on. "So entrepreneurs have to a form small movement of hundreds of people to get in."

In the Unreasonable Institute's last Marketplace, Ugandan entrepreneur Moses Sanga was initially skeptical of his ability to raise the money to attend the 2011 Institute. He started his company, Eco-Fuel Africa, enabling villagers to turn agricultural waste into a clean burning fuel source, with only $500. "How do these people expect a guy like me from a remote village in Africa, with no rich friends or relatives and with limited access to the internet to raise thousands of dollars?" he said he wondered at first. "No one in my entire village even knew what a credit card is and the nearest place to access internet was 17 kilometers away." Despite his father telling him not to waste his time, Moses decided to give it a try anyway. He walked the 17 kilometers and spoke with CEOs of local businesses. "I simply shared my honest life story. One person heard it and he was touched. He told a friend and that friend told another friend. Before I knew it, I had many supporters around the world." Moses not only succeeded in raising the money to attend the Institute, he went on to raise $60,000 at the Unreasonable Institute and to win a spot as a TED Fellow.

If you're keen to support Unreasonable entrepreneurs striving to change the world like Moses Sanga, you'll have your chance on at www.unreasonableinstitute.org/marketplace when the Marketplace goes live on January 17, 2012 for 50 days, closing March 7th.

How can you take part and make a change?

-        Visit the Marketplace at http:// unreasonableinstitute.org/marketplace

-        Read the stories of the entrepreneurs and learn about their ventures

-        Donate to the ventures that get you most excited

-        Share your vote via the email, Twitter (use #givewings) and Facebook links from the entrepreneur's profile page

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About Unreasonable Institute

Unreasonable Institute is a mentor-intensive accelerator for startup entrepreneurs and ventures hungry to tackle the world's greatest social and environmental problems. Founded in 2010, the Unreasonable Institute annually unites 25 high-impact entrepreneurs from around the world in Boulder, Colo. for six weeks. During that time, the entrepreneurs live and work with 50 world-class mentors, pitch their ventures to hundreds of, obtain legal advice and design consulting, form relationships with up to 30 impact investment funds, and prepare to launch financially self-sustaining, globally scalable ventures that can serve the needs of at least 1 million people.

Organization: Invested Development

Location: US

Overview Title: Investments Intern Start/End Date: Spring Semester 2012 Schedule: 15 hours per week  Pay: Stipend Location: Boston

Invested Development is looking for a highly motivated business student at the junior or senior undergraduate level. The ideal candidate enjoys learning about technology startups and businesses that create impact in emerging markets. Specifically, an interest in international business, investing, entrepreneurship, and mobile tech and/or alternative energy startups is preferred. The intern should possess a strong commitment to social enterprise.

Job Description

The intern will report to the ID Marketing and Research Manager. Primary tasks will include compiling key findings documents from research reports, online research, sourcing pipeline, lead generation, and creating deliverables for internal and external use.

Initial assignments will include:

• Updating and creating an intuitive, robust system for tracking and sorting online pipeline leads and lead sources.  
• Identifying hotspots and trends in pipeline and communicating the trends in different ways (written, orally, visually).

Skills/Requirements:

• Demonstrated research skills and analytical savvy. 
• Attention to detail and highly organized. 
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written.
• Works well independently and in a start-up environment by taking initiative. 
• Takes responsibility for and pride in his or her work.
• Can create user-friendly Excel sheets and visuals to present qualitative and quantitative data. 
• Microsoft Office proficiency. Advanced PPT skills and graphic design skills are a plus. 
• Is adaptable and punctual.

Apply

Send resume (PDF preferred) and cover letter to Christina at ctamer[at]investeddevelopment.com. Use “ID Intern - first name last name” as the subject. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview.

About Invested Development

We are a for-profit, impact investment fund manager sourcing and funding the most impacting solutions to global poverty. We invest in seed stage social enterprise with mobile technology and alternative energy solutions that are affordable and scalable in emerging markets.

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